Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN his newly developed condition as an invalid Mr. Douglas had gone on for more than a year. During this time he had taken no active steps of any kind. Jamie had been left to read as he pleased every book he could lay his hands upon, from Mr. Pyper’s old-fashioned theology to D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, a curious if not very extensive range. Only these two, the dreary boy with his books, and his possible writer-ship hung suspended so to speak, no one taking any steps to put him forth like his brothers into active life, and the grim invalid, who rarely left his room or indeed his bed, remained in Drumcarro. Such an emptiness occurs not unfrequently in the story of a house once full and echoing with the superabundant energies of a large family; but the father and son afforded a deeper emblem of dulness and desolation than almost any mother and daughter could have done. They were more separated from life. The Laird cared nothing for his neighbours, rich or poor, whether they prospered or were in want. Marg’ret, who had the control of everything, kept indeed a liberal hand, and preserved the reputation of Drumcarro as a house from which no poor body was ever sent away without a handful of meal at least, if not more substantial charity.

But her master took no interest in the vicissitudes of the clachan or to hear of either prosperity or need. She still attempted to carry him the news of the district for the relief of her own mind if not for the advantage of his, for to arrange his room in silence or bring his meals without a word was an effort quite beyond Marg’ret’s powers.

“The Rosscraig Carmichaels have come to the end of their tether,” she told him one morning, “there’s a muckle roup proclaimed for next month of a’ the farm things. I might maybe send Duncan to see what’s going, if there’s anything very cheap, and folk say the farm itself.”

“What’s that you’re saying, woman?”

“I’m just telling you, Laird. The Rosscraig family is clean ruined—no much wonder if ye think of a’ the on-goings they’ve had. There’s to be a roup, and the estate itsel’ by private contract, or if nae offer comes—”

“Get out of my room, woman,” cried Drumcarro. “Bring me my clothes. You steek everything away as if a gentleman was to be bound for ever in his bed. I’m going to get up.”

“Sir!” cried Marg’ret in dismay. “It’s as much as your life is worth.”

“My life!” he said with a snarl of angry impatience, but as he struggled up in his bed Drumcarro caught sight of himself, a weird figure, lean as an old eagle, with long hair and ragged beard, and no doubt the spring of sudden energy with which he raised himself was felt through all his rusty joints so long unaccustomed to movement. He kept up, sitting erect, but he uttered a groan of impatience as he did so. “I’m not my own master,” he said—“a woman’s enough to daunton me that once never knew what difficulty was. Stop your infernal dusting and cleaning, and listen to me. Where’s that lass in London living now? Or is she aye there? Or has she taken up with some man to waste her siller like the rest of her kind?”

“Sir, are ye meaning your daughter Kirsteen?” said Marg’ret, with dignity.

“Who should I be meaning? Ye can write her a letter and send it by the post. Tell her there’s need of her. Her father’s wanting her, and at once. Do ye hear? There’s no time to trouble about a frank. Just send it by the post.”

“If ye were not in such an awfu’ hurry,” said Marg’ret, “there might maybe be an occasion.”

“I can wait for none of your occasions—there’s little feeling in her if she cannot pay for one letter—from her father. Tell her I’m wanting her, and just as fast as horses’ legs can carry her, she’s to come.”

“Maister,” cried Marg’ret with great seriousness drawing close to the bed, “if ye’re feeling the end sa near and wanting your bairns about ye, will I no send for the minister? It’s right he should be here.”

Drumcarro sat taller and taller in his bed, and let forth a string of epithets enough to make a woman’s blood run cold. “Ye old bletherin’ doited witch!” he said, “ye old——“ His eloquence had not failed him, and Marg’ret, though a brave woman, who had taken these objurgations composedly enough on previous occasions, was altogether overwhelmed by the torrent of fiery words, and the red ferocious light in the eyes of the skeleton form in the bed. She put up her hands to her ears and fled. “I’ll do your will—I’ll do your will,” she cried. A letter was not a very easy piece of work to Marg’ret, but so great was the impression made upon her mind that she fulfilled the Laird’s commission at once. She wrote as follows in the perturbation of her mind—

“Your fader has either taken leave of his senses, or he’s fey, or thinks his later end is nigh. But any way I’m bid to summons you, Kirsteen, just this moment without delay. I’m to tell ye there’s need of you—that your fader’s wanting ye. Ye will just exerceese your own judgment, for he’s in his ordinar’ neither better nor warse. But he’s took a passion of wanting ye and will not bide for an occasion nor a private hand as may be whiles heard of—nor yet a frank that could be got with a little trouble. So ye will have this letter to pay for, and ye’ll come no doubt if ye think it’s reasonable, but I cannot say that I do for my part.

“P.S. The Carmichaels of Rosscraig are just ruined with feasting and wasting, and their place is to be sold and everything roupit—a sair downcome for their name.”

Kirsteen obeyed this letter with a speed beyond anything which was thought possible in the north. She drove to the door, no longer finding it necessary to conceal her coming. Marg’ret’s postscript, written from the mere instinct of telling what news there was to tell, had already thrown some light to her upon this hasty summons. Drumcarro lay propped up by pillows waiting for her, with something of the old deep red upon his worn face. He was wonderfully changed, but the red light in his eyes and the passion which had always blazed or smouldered in the man, ready to burst out at any touch, even when covered with the inevitable repressions of modern life, was more apparent than ever. His greetings were few. “Eh, so that’s you?” he said. “Ye’ve come fast.”

“I was told that you wanted me, father.”

“And maybe thought I was dying and there was no time to lose.” He noticed that Kirsteen held in her hand a newspaper, at which he glanced with something like contempt. A London newspaper was no small prize to people so far off from all sources of information. But such things were at present contemptible to Drumcarro in presence of the overwhelming pre-occupation in his own mind.

“I see,” he said, “ye’ve brought a paper to the old man; but I have other things in my head. When ye were here before ye made an offer. It was none of my seeking. It was little likely I should think of a lass like you having siller at her command—which is just another sign that everything in this country is turned upside down.”

Kirsteen made no reply, but waited for the further revelation of his news.

“Well,” he said with a slight appearance of embarrassment and a wave of his hand, “here’s just an opportunity. I have not the means of my own self. I would just have to sit and grin in this corner where a severe Providence has thrown me and see it go—to another of those damned Campbells, little doubt of that.”

“What is it?” she said. Kirsteen had lifted her head too, like a horse scenting the battle from afar. She had not her father’s hatred of his hereditary foes, but there was a fine strain of tradition in Kirsteen’s veins.

“It’s just Rosscraig—our own land, that’s been in the Douglas name for hundreds of years, and out of it since the attainder. I would be ready to depart in peace if I had it back.”

Kirsteen’s eyes flashed in response. “If it’s possible—but they will want a great sum for Rosscraig.”

“Possible!” he cried with furious impatience. “How dare ye beguile me with your offer, if it’s only to think of what’s possible? I can do that mysel’. Does one of your name condescend to a dirty trade, and serve women that are not fit to tie a Douglas’s shoe, and then come to me and talk of what’s possible? If that’s all, give up your mantua-making and your trading that’s a disgrace to your family, and come back and look after the house which will set you better. Possible!” he cried, the fire flying from his eyes and the foam from his mouth. “For what do you demean yourself—and me to permit it—if it’s no possible?” He came to the end on a high note, with the sharpness of indignant passion in his voice.

Kirsteen had followed every word with a kindling countenance, with responsive flame in her eyes. “Ye speak justly,” she said, with a little heaving of her breast. “For them to whom it’s natural a little may suffice. But I that do it against nature am bound to a different end.” She paused a little, thinking; then raised her head. “It shall be possible,” she said.

He held out his thin and trembling fingers, which were like eagle’s claws.

“Your hand upon it,” he cried. The hot clutch made Kirsteen start and shiver. He dropped her hand with an excited laugh. “That’s the first bargain,” he said, “was ever made between father and child to the father’s advantage—at least, in this house. And a lass,—and all my fine lads that I sent out for honour and for gain!” He leant back on his pillows with feeble sobs of sound, the penalty of his excitement. “Not for me,” he said, “not for me, though I would be the first—but for the auld name, that was once so great.”

Kirsteen unfolded the paper tremulously, with tears lingering on her eyelashes. “Father, if ye will look here——”

“Go away with your news and your follies,” he said roughly. “You think much of your London town and your great world, as ye call it, but I think more of my forbears’ name and the lands they had, and to bring to confusion a false race. Kirsteen,” he put out his hand again, and drew her close to the bedside, clutching her arm. “I’ll tell you a thing I’ve told nobody. It was me that did it. I just took and threw him down the linn. Me an old man, him a young one, and as false as hell. He was like the serpent at that bairn’s lug; and I just took him by the scruff of the neck. My hand’s never got the better of it,” he added, thrusting her away suddenly, and looking at his right hand, blowing upon it as if to remove the stiffness of the strain.

“Father!” Kirsteen cried, with subdued horror. “What was it you did?”

He chuckled with sounds of laughter that seemed to dislocate his throat. “I took him by the scruff of the neck—I never thought I could have had the strength. It was just pawsion. The Douglases have that in them; they’re wild when they’re roused. I took him—by the scruff of the neck. He never made a struggle. I know nothing more about it, if he was living or dead.”

“Ye killed him!” cried Kirsteen with horror. “Oh, it’s no possible!”

“There ye are with your possibles again. It’s just very possible when a man’s blood’s up. He’s not the first,” he said, in a low tone, turning his face to the wall. He lay muttering there for some time words of which Kirsteen could only hear, “the scruff of the neck,” “no struggle,” “it’s hurt my hand, though,” till in the recoil from his excitement Drumcarro fell fast asleep and remembered no more.

He had, however, it appeared, to pay for this excitement and the tremendous tension in which he had been held from the time he summoned Kirsteen to the moment of her arrival. His frame, already so weakened, had not been able to bear it. He was seized during the night by a paralytic attack, from which he never rallied, though he lived for a week or more as in a living tomb. All that had been so important to Drumcarro died off from him, and left him struggling in that dumb insensibility, living yet dead. Kirsteen was never able to let him know that, herself as eager for the elevation of the family as he could be, she had at once opened negotiations for the purchase of Rosscraig, though on terms that would cripple her for years. Sometimes his eyes would glare upon her wildly out of the half dead face asking questions to which his deadened senses could understand no answer. She at last withdrew from the room altogether, finding that he was more calm in her absence. And all the time there lay on the table beside his bed, rejected first in his excitement, all-impotent to reach him now, the copy of the Gazette brought by Kirsteen from London, in which appeared the announcement that Colonel Alexander Douglas, of the 100th Native Regiment, for distinguished valour and long services, had received the honours of a K.C.B. Had it come but a day sooner, the exultation of Drumcarro might have killed him (which would have been so good a thing), but at least would have given him such sensations of glory and gratified pride as would have crowned his life. But he never had this supreme delight.

When Sir Alexander Douglas, K.C.B., came home, he found his patrimony largely increased, but both father and mother and all his belongings swept away. The one whom he found it hardest to approve was Kirsteen. Anne with her well-to-do doctor had nothing now to forgive, that her brother could see; Mary had fulfilled every duty of woman. Young Jeanie with her young soldier had all the prestige of beauty and youth, and the fact that her husband was a rising man and sure of promotion to make her acceptable to her family. But a London mantua-maker, “sewing,” so he put it to himself, “for her bread!” It startled him a little to find that he owed Rosscraig to that mantua-maker, but he never got over the shock of hearing what and where she was. “Any sort of a man, if he had been a chimney-sweep, would have been better,” Sir Alexander said. And Kirsteen was a rare and not very welcome visitor in the house she had redeemed. They all deplored the miserable way of life she had chosen, and that she had no man. For the credit of human nature, it must be said that the young Gordons, succoured and established by Kirsteen’s bounty, were on her side, and stood by her loyally; but even Jeanie wavered in her convictions in respect to the mantua-making. She too would have been thankful to drown the recollection of the establishment in Chapel Street in the name of a man. “If she had but a good man of her own!” But Major Gordon, soon Colonel and eventually General, as fortunate a man as in piping times of peace a soldier could hope to be, put down this suggestion with a vehemence which nobody could understand. He was the only one to whom Kirsteen’s secret had ever been revealed.

In the times which are not ancient history, which some of us still remember, which were our high days of youth, as far down as in the fifties of this present century, there lived in one of the most imposing houses in one of the princeliest squares of Edinburgh, a lady, who was an old lady, yet still as may be said in the prime of life. Her eye was not dim nor her natural force abated; her beautiful head of hair was still red, her eyes still full of fire. She drove the finest horses in the town, and gave dinners in which judges delighted and where the best talkers were glad to come. Her hospitality was almost boundless, her large house running over with hordes of nephews and nieces, her advice, which meant her help, continually demanded from one side or other of a large and widely extended family. No one could be more cheerful, more full of interest in all that went on. Her figure had expanded a little like her fortune, but she was the best dressed woman in Edinburgh, always clothed in rich dark-coloured silks and satins, with lace which a queen might have envied. Upon the table by her bed-head there stood a silver casket, without which she never moved; but the story of which the records were there enshrined, sometimes appeared to this lady like a beautiful dream of the past, of which she was not always sure that it had ever been.

She was of the Drumcarro family in Argyllshire, who it is well known are the elder branch of all; and she was well known not only as the stand-by of her family, but as the friend of the poor and struggling everywhere. It was a common question in many circles where she was known as to how it was that she had never gotten a man—a question more than usually mysterious, seeing how well off she was, and that she must have been very good-looking in her time. She was Miss Douglas of Moray Place, sister to a number of distinguished Indian officers, and to one book-worm and antiquary well known to a certain class of learned readers, but whom Edinburgh lightly jeered at as blind Jimmy Douglas or the Moudiewart—not that he was blind indeed but only abstracted in much learning. Miss Douglas was the elder sister also of the beautiful Lady Gordon whose husband was in command at Edinburgh Castle. There was no one better thought of. And so far as anybody ever knew, most people had entirely forgotten that in past times, not to disgrace her family, her name had appeared on a neat plate in conjunction with the name of Miss Jean Brown, Court Dressmaker and Mantua-Maker, as

MISS KIRSTEEN.

THE END.